I sat down for a conversation with @xavierbonilla87 today. Part of what we talked about is symbolism and politically sacred places.

I want to expand on that a bit here in a short thread.

Watching a mob invade the Capitol inspires a visceral reaction of disgust among those of us who are patriots.

Why?

They are defiling the heart of our Constitutional system. Even if we disdain the current Congress, the building is politically sacred.

Lincoln called for us to have a civil religion based on reverence for the Constitution. Part of that religion is going to require shrines and temples dedicated to the civil religion. The Capitol is one such shrine.

We may have disdain for Congress at any given time. But the building speaks to a symbolic significance that no single Congress can destroy. It has psychological significance because it has symbolic significance - it is *the* symbol of our democratic branch of government.

As I mentioned to Xavier, the capital dome was finished during the Civil War. Lincoln saw its symbolic value to be so great that even as the Union itself was in peril, the great symbol of American republicanism needed to be completed.

We watched that symbol be violated today.

But what makes it that much more appalling is it was inspired by the President, the person tasked with being our symbolic leader. We keep political time by the person who occupies that office. That person, our political time marker, egged on the defiling of our republican symbol.

This violates not only the civil religion, but one of those tasked with preserving that religion, of being a faithful steward, inspired the violation.

Very little damage was done physically. But psychologically, it is dramatically damaging.

One symbol of the republic inspired the violation of another.

Perhaps this is why so many responded with "this is not who we are" because it violated their understanding of the symbolic symbiosis within the American government.